PTSD/Meditation Breakthrough: Forgiving Myself and Forgiving God
Image by Gino Crescoli

After serving in a scout-sniper platoon in Mosul, Tom Voss came home carrying invisible wounds of war — the memory of doing or witnessing things that went against his fundamental beliefs. This was not a physical injury that could heal with medication and time but a “moral injury” — a wound to the soul that eventually urged him toward suicide. Desperate for relief from the pain and guilt that haunted him, he embarked on a 2,700-mile journey, walking across America. At the end of the trek, Tom realizes he is really just beginning his healing. He pursues meditation training and discovers sacred breathing techniques that shatter his understanding of war and himself, and move him from despair to hope. Tom Voss’s story gives inspiration to veterans, their friends and family, and survivors of all kinds.

 Please enjoy this excerpt from the book.

*****

I began the final day of the meditation workshop with a strange, unexpected intention: to forgive myself, and to forgive God. We were doing the new breathing technique again — long breaths followed by medium breaths followed by short breaths. James and Ken told us that no matter what happened, we were supposed to keep our eyes closed, keep breathing, and keep going.

When you give a group of vets instructions like that, we do it, 100 percent. We were in it together. I felt ready to face whatever came up, whether it was flashbacks or indecipherable languages or anything else.

Later, I learned about these energy points in our bodies called chakras. These points exist at energy centers throughout the body, like the base of the spine and the top of the head. Our chakras can get clogged up with junk like trauma. Breathing and meditation can help loosen the junk and realign the body to its natural state.

We did the new breathing technique one final time. I didn’t experience flashbacks this time, just some tingling and numbness in my hands and face. When we were done, we lay down to rest. It was then that I remembered the intention I’d set for that day’s class.


innerself subscribe graphic


In a deep state of meditation, I recalled Father Thomas, his essence. I didn’t quite recall his words, but I remembered the concept of forgiveness. I felt it like a question mark. Could I forgive myself for things I had and hadn’t done in Iraq? Could I forgive God for the moral wounds that had nearly destroyed what was left of my life?

I didn’t ask the question in my mind. I asked the question from somewhere deeper inside myself. I didn’t need words or thoughts. This Q&A was between my soul and nature, or God.

A tingling sensation suddenly stirred at the base of my spine. It felt like something was opening up and unwinding itself from deep inside me. It was a physical sensation, but it wasn’t just my physical body that was unraveling. I felt the sensation move upward along my spine. It gained momentum as it moved from my tailbone to the middle of my back, then up between my shoulder blades and into my throat. The sensation, the ckakra, the whatever-it-was burst through my throat in a silent sob and came out as tears. There, lying on the mat surrounded by other veterans, I wept freely, and soundlessly, without sorrow or grief.

As I wept, a voice from within rose up and consumed me with the force of a rocket-propelled grenade:

You are forgiven, it said.

I felt the forgiveness permeate every cell.

And then, a response welled up from deep inside me.

I forgive you, too.

Meditation Was Really Hard In The Beginning

I sucked at meditation in the beginning. I’d do it for one day, then miss a whole week. Then I’d do it for three days but skip the fourth day. It went on like that for months. Meditation was really hard. It was hard to sit still. It was hard to do the breathing. It was hard to discipline myself to do it when I didn’t feel like doing it. But I was determined to incorporate it into my life because when I stayed consistent with the practice, I felt like a completely different person.

And I wanted to share that feeling with other veterans. I started volunteering for the organization that had produced the workshop in Aspen. I worked with Ken, James, and Kathy to arrange meditation workshops for vets in Milwaukee.

At the workshops we’d teach the same breathing techniques I’d learned in Aspen. We’d listen to the same tape I’d listened to. We would do the patterned breathing technique — breathing slow, then medium, then fast. And I’d watch other vets have these incredible breakthroughs, just like I’d had. They’d feel like a weight had been lifted, just like me. They’d leave the course with a new sense of hope, just like me. Some of them would even start meditating regularly.

Even as I shared the breath work with more and more people, the process remained a mystery. How could something as simple as breathing be so powerful? How could breathing in a particular pattern release trauma so quickly and address moral injury so directly? How could it be that meditation, which was free and available to everyone, was the answer we’d all been searching for?

Meditation: Making It A Part of Daily Life

One day I got a call from James and Kathy, asking if I wanted to join the organization full-time. Not as a volunteer but as a full-time paid staff member. My job would be to travel around the country organizing meditation workshops for veterans.

By fall 2015 I found myself in Washington, DC, working for the organization full-time, living in a meditation center, and spending hours a day in meditation. Before I started meditating, I’d spent nearly ten years trying and failing to heal moral injury through every means I could find — talk therapy, drugs, alcohol, prescription medication, EMDR therapy, and a 2,700-mile walk across the country.

Once I made meditation a part of my daily life, it took only eighteen months to reach a point I’d never dreamed of: not only was I not suicidal or depressed, but I no longer needed alcohol to numb the pain of moral injury. I could sit and be with myself for hours on end. I could even sit and think of the past without spiraling into sorrow.

There was a distance between me and my past now. A buffer. Meditation didn’t make the past disappear. It let me revisit memories without getting completely sucked into them. The past stayed in the past, and I stayed in the present.

I was traveling all over the country and sometimes abroad to do incredibly fulfilling work.

I was more than what I’d seen and done.

I was more than my wounds.

The future looked certain and bright. But the present moment, which I was learning to make friends with, looked even brighter.

Excerpted from the book Where War Ends.
© 2019 by Tom Voss and Rebecca Anne Nguyen.
Reprinted with permission from NewWorldLibrary.com

Article Source

Where War Ends: A Combat Veteran’s 2,700-Mile Journey to Heal ? Recovering from PTSD and Moral Injury through Meditation
by Tom Voss and Rebecca Anne Nguyen

Where War Ends by Tom Voss and Rebecca Anne NguyenAn Iraq War veteran’s riveting journey from suicidal despair to hope. Tom Voss’s story will give inspiration to veterans, their friends and family, and survivors of all kinds. (Also available as a Kindle edition and as an audiobook.)

click to order on amazon

 

 

Related Books

About the Author

Tom Voss, author of Where War EndsTom Voss served as an infantry scout in the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment’s scout-sniper platoon. While deployed in Mosul, Iraq, he participated in hundreds of combat and humanitarian missions. Rebecca Anne Nguyen, Voss’s sister and coauthor, is a writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. TheMeditatingVet.com

Trailer of the documentary/movie: Almost Sunrise
(the story of Tom Voss and Anthony Anderson's 2700-mile trek across the US)
{vembed Y=1yhQ2INTpT4}

An update from veteran Tom Voss, author of the book "Where War Ends", and subject of the moving/documentary "Almost Sunrise"
{vembed Y=tIOCoTeJ6JU}